Friday 29 October 2021, 8pm, Dartington Trust
Join us in Dartington for what promises to be a very special double bill of live music featuring Shifa and Elaine Mitchener.
This event is part of Black Atlantic, a new decolonial cultural project at the intersections of race, art, ecology and climate justice.
MORE INFO / TICKETS: https://www.dartington.org/event/sensing-the-planet-live-shifa/
Sensing the planet, The Black Atlantic Symposium at The Dartington • 27–31 October 2021
Black Atlantic is a new decolonial arts partnership, co-established by UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Royal Court Theatre and Dartington Trust, that aims to strengthen the role of arts and culture in advancing social and climate justice.
Black Atlantic officially launches with a three-day symposium, Sensing the Planet – an interdisciplinary gathering to discuss how art and culture can confront some of the most important challenges of our time. The symposium is part of a wider programme of events – including short courses, talks and more – which can be seen in full below.
Timed to take place just before the intergovernmental climate conference COP26, Sensing the Planet will highlight issues of race and environmental harm as well as the role played by the UK, most prominently the south-west of England, in histories of slavery, empire and climate breakdown. It will also champion the role of interdisciplinary culture in imagining new futures built on principles of sustainability and justice, bringing together leading decolonial thinkers, artists and activists including headline speakers Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Paul Gilroy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Philippe Sands.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
RACHEL MUSSON is a saxophonist, improviser and composer based in the UK. She has spent the last decade immersed in improvised music, and has also gradually been introducing composed elements into her work, drawing on text, field recordings and processing sounds. She is involved with a variety of improvisation projects, and works regularly with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward and Alex Hawkins, amongst others. She features on several releases, including a nonet featuring her composition 'I Went This Way' (577 Records), two with Shifa, feat. Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders, (577 Records), one with Mark Sanders and John Edwards (Two Rivers Records), trio with Liam Noble and Mark Sanders (Babel), and Corey Mwamba (Takuroku).
Mark has worked with many greats of the British, European and American free jazz improvised music scene including Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Henry Grimes, Elaine Mitchener, Wadada Leo Smith, Myra Melford, Charles Gayle , Sirone and William Parker
He has also played with Jah Wobble, Harold Budd, Bill Laswell, Christian Marclay, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ilan Volkov and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
He is a member of many working groups including duos with Nicole Mitchell and Rhodri Davies, Neil Charles' 'Dark Days' with Cleveland Watkiss & Pat Thomas, 'Last Dream of the Morning' with John Butcher & John Edwards, 'Shifa' with Rachel Musson and Pat Thomas and 'Sarost' with Larry Stabbins & Paul Rogers.
As an educator he has taught improvisation at many universities around the country as a lecturer and guest tutor.
Mark has played concerts and festivals around the world and appears on over 220 CD and Vinyl releases.
Mark was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2024
"Drop the needle on the first track — or any track for that matter — and the first thing one is bound to notice is the amazing percussion skills of Mark Sanders" – Peter Thelen... Exposé
"Mark is just incredible and immensely diverse, he is at the center of "Kwingyaw" and it is difficult to tell what he is doing to get some of these sounds." – Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery, NY
Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy.
Her debut album SOLO THROAT released in May 2024 under Café Oto’s OTOROKU label has been described as “An uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths.” (Jazzwise)
Experimental musicians and improvisers she has worked with include Moor Mother, Joelle Leandre, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Pat Thomas, Black Top, David Toop, Xhosa Cole. Elaine is founder of the collective electroacoustic unit The Rolling Calf. Composers, visual artists and poets she has worked with include: George E Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, Matana Roberts; visual artists The Otolith Group, Christian Marclay, Sonia Boyce; Jay Bernard, Roy Claire Potter, Dante Micheaux; chamber ensembles Apartment House, ICE, Ensemble MAM, Klangforum Wien, Van Huynh Co.
